Tragedy of errors

22 June 2002 — 10:00am

The mystery boat dubbed SIEV-X - "X" for unknown - flashed across the federal election screen as the region's worst maritime tragedy. More than 350 asylum seekers drowned, including 150 children. The few survivors who clung to life in the water for more than 20 hours until picked up by Indonesian fishing boats told awful tales of being forced to board at the point of Indonesian police guns after seeing the decrepit boat and the terrible overcrowding.

A tragedy, said the Prime Minister, but there was nothing Australia could have done. SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters, a no-go zone for our border protection surveillance. Australia moved on.

No-one knew anything. Admiral Geoffrey Smith, the head of Australia's border protection program, Operation Relex, said the first he had heard of SIEV-X was after it sank. The Maritime Safety Authority had no records at all of SIEV-X. The Prime Minister's people smuggling task force, while not emphatic, gave the impression it knew little, if anything.

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The knowledge vacuum let Australia off the horns of a dilemma central to the post-Tampa border protection strategy. Operation Relex included full-on aerial surveillance by P3 Orion aircraft equipped with sophisticated radar from 30 nautical miles south of Indonesia to Christmas Island. The plan was to spot a boat as soon as it entered international waters, move a ship to intercept it, and turn it back.

But this exercise in total control brought with it an assumption of responsibility. As the Coastwatch chief, Admiral Marcus Bonser, pointed out in evidence to the children overboard inquiry, the blanket surveillance also amounted to a full-time blanket search-and-rescue operation.

"A comprehensive surveillance pattern was in place doing nothing but looking for these boats," he said. If Australia found a boat in trouble it had a duty to rescue passengers - a legal duty and, for the navy, a cultural imperative. And that meant another rescue scenario similar to Tampa, the very scenario the Government wanted to avoid.

So the fact that we knew nothing of SIEV-X - except, as the Prime Minister said, that it had sunk outside Australia's surveillance zone - was a relief.

Then everything changed. In March Tony Kevin, a retired career diplomat and former ambassador to Cambodia, put in a private submission to the children overboard inquiry raising strong doubts that SIEV-X had sunk in Indonesian waters and asking why the navy did not spot it.

In response, the Defence Minister, Robert Hill, asked the Australian Defence Force for advice. The ADF, which carried out no investigation of what happened to SIEV-X at the time it was lost, was for the first time challenged to prove John Howard's claim. It did a calculation that SIEV-X sank in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java - Indonesian waters. Hill advised the Opposition Leader, Simon Crean, accordingly.

On May 22, Bonser blew the whistle. Coastwatch and Operation Relex had detailed, accurate intelligence that SIEV-X had sailed on October 18, the day before the vessel sank and two days before survivors were rescued. Coastwatch's calculation backed intelligence from the Australian Federal Police and detailed contemporary reports from The Australian's Don Greenlees in Jakarta and co-ordinates calculated by the harbourmaster of the port from which SIEV-X departed that it sank in international waters south of Java within the Australian surveillance zone.

The Maritime Safety Authority had already come clean - Coastwatch had issued it with a SIEV-X overdue notice on October 22. The navy was forced to come clean, admitting it had received the intelligence of the boat's departure from October 18. The task force came clean through the release of its official minutes, which showed it was on alert for SIEV-X's arrival at Christmas Island from October 18 and even then feared SIEV-X was in poor condition and could require "rescue at sea".

This week the ADF retracted its categorical assertion to the inquiry that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters and Howard admitted there was conflicting evidence on where SIEV-X sank.

Australian officials knew an awful lot about SIEV-X. Indeed, the organiser of the voyage, the notorious people smuggler Abu Qussey, was a top-priority target of the Immigration Department and the Australian Federal Police. Intelligence officers had tracked plans for his latest voyage from August, then tracked the likely time and place of the departure of SIEV-X, officially named "the Abu Qussey vessel" from September. Coastwatch was so confident that SIEV-X had departed on October 18 that it told the task force it had "no confirmed sightings ... but multisource information with high confidence level". According to Government insiders, reports of departures came to the task force only when they were considered reliable, and the ADF - represented on the task force - always went in search of them. The navy refused to answer Herald questions on this matter yesterday.

On October 20, an Federal Police intelligence officer was so concerned about SIEV-X not being spotted that he told Coastwatch by phone it was at risk because of overcrowding. By October 21, the task force was so concerned that SIEV-X hadn't been spotted that the minutes recorded: "Check Defence P3 (Orion) is maintaining surveillance over Christmas Island." By October 22, the task force gave SIEV-X a name - SIEV-8 - and the minutes recorded: "Not spotted yet, missing, grossly overloaded, no jetsam spotted." A day later, the awful truth. The AFP reported gruesome details of the voyage, the drownings and its belief that the boat sank in international waters, Australia's watch.

The big question: why didn't ADF surveillance - described by the navy in evidence as almost foolproof - find SIEV-X? Before the public knew that the navy knew, the navy said it had taken no special steps to search for SIEV-X because its surveillance was already comprehensive in international waters close to Java.

After the public knew the navy knew, it said it had pulled back its aerial surveillance to close to Christmas Island on or before October 19, when SIEV-X was heading our way, and did nothing in response to intelligence reports that SIEV-X had sailed. The navy declined to clarify this evidence yesterday.

Is this a cover-up of a stuff-up, or of something too horrible to contemplate?

The children overboard inquiry into SIEV-X resumes in three weeks.

What we now know

October 18: Intelligence reports that SIEV-X has departed Indonesia for Christmas Island. PM's task force told SIEV-X and another boat on way to Christmas Island, with "risk of vessels in poor condition and rescue at sea". Coastwatch confident of intelligence - "multisource information with high confidence level".

October 19: Intelligence again reports SIEV-X has departed Indonesia. Task force told Defence is about to intercept the other boat 60 nautical miles from Christmas Island, and that there could be 250 on board the SIEV-X. Defence later tells the children overboard inquiry it had comprehensive aerial surveillance looking for boats in international waters close to Java, where - and at the same time as - SIEV-X sank. Later still it retracts that, saying that on October 19 planes had been pulled back to Christmas Island and that Defence did nothing to search for SIEV-X.

At 3pm, out of sight of land, SIEV-X sinks.

October 20: Intelligence reports SIEV-X is "small and with 400 passengers on board (more than four times the legal limit) with some passengers not embarking because the vessel was overloaded". Concerned AFP intelligence officer says boat is at risk due to overcrowding. PM's task force told to expect it at Christmas Island on October 21, with HMAS Arunta (pictured at top), standing by "to relieve possible overcrowding". Of those on SIEV-X, 353 die. Some in water until 11am waiting for rescue. Indonesian fishing boats pick up 44 survivors.

missing, grossly overloaded, no jetsam spotted, no reports from relatives".

October 23: AFP reports to task force that boat sank in international waters south of Java, in Australian surveillance zone. Howard tells voters boat sank in Indonesian waters, outside surveillance zone.